Administrata

Topic the first: Fortnightcaps.

I’ve enjoyed doing the Fortnightcaps for the last few months, and I still intend to continue them through the end of the year. However, after much deliberation, I’ve decided that the project will not continue into 2012. This decision comes for a variety of reasons. First, the project was intended to get my brain working on a twice a week basis, coming up with a story idea and bringing it to quick completion. I still contend this is a great exercise for writers, but it’s an exercise that I’m now doing twice most weeks thanks to Five Minute Fiction and Hump Day Challenge.

That’s a reason, but it’s not really the reason. Since I already did some pulling back of the curtain on Friday when showing my pageview stats, I’m going to talk a little more about my site views. Fortnightcaps by far account for the worst traffic that I get on this blog. According to my bitly stats, the last five links that I put up for Fortnightcap stories got 0, 0, 1, 1, and 1 hits. Now, this website isn’t primarily a vehicle for generating hits, or else I’d be doing all the stupid SEO stuff that my spam comments are always talking about. But when we’re talking about any kind of creative output, there’s the necessity to keep in mind the viewing audience. Anything story I put on this blog has its first publication rights used up, making it harder to potentially turn around and put out to anthologies, magazines, or any other publication venue. If I’m burning the rights on stories and then having no one actually read them, then I ultimately feel like I’m doing a long term disservice to myself.

So while this blog isn’t primarily a hit generating site, I still have to keep hits in mind when I do something like burn story rights on here. I’ll probably keep a similar project going on in 2012, just not on the blog. I’d like to thank anyone who has read and enjoyed the Fortnightcaps thus far, and hope you will enjoy the few months left in the project.

Topic the second: #flashathon

I like to mention this occasionally to keep it in people’s minds, and will probably do it more and more as the date arrives. I’ve not talked about it in awhile because I haven’t really had news to share. I am starting to put feelers out to bring in “guest inspiration” from other writers and blogs. We’re getting closer and closer to the date, as you can see in the countdown on the right hand side of this blog. 1 month, 10 days as of this morning.

For those who might be new, or haven’t seen me talk about it before, the #flashathon is going to be a flash fiction marathon hosted on this blog October 22nd. It will consist of 12 hourly posts, each of which will provide some sort of optional story inspiration (probably in the form of a word or phrase). Participants in the #flashathon are then encouraged to write a flash fiction piece either using that inspiration or inspiration of their own. The goal is 12 stories in 12 hours. Or however many hours you can/want to participate in.

More details can be found in the Flashathon tab at the top of every page.